David J. Olson
Global Health TV
In the last 20 years, Ethiopia has emerged as a family planning powerhouse. In Studies in Family Planning, I reported that, from 1990 to 2011, modern contraceptive use increased ninefold, from 2.9% to 27.3%, and the total fertility rate (the average number of children born to a woman in her lifetime) dropped from 7.0 to 4.8.
Now Ethiopia’s reputation has been further burnished by the results of a report released May 27th by Performance Monitoring and Accountability 2020 (PMA2020) that show an increase in the use of modern contraception from 27.3% in 2011 to 33.3% in 2014 and a drop in the fertility rate from 4.8% to 4.4%.